


awhile in thought

by gisho



Category: Watchmen (Comic), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Mad Science, Steampunk, Warning: Canon-Typical Violence, very talky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:28:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22727644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: With the Gilded Age in full swing, Daniel Dreiberg contemplates the upcoming Keene Act's crackdown on independent scientific research, and wonders if the world is better or worse for his own. Also, whether the Venusians are really going to invade.(The backstory of an as-yet-hypothetical steampunk AU. Written for Winter Wonderswap 2020.)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	awhile in thought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flyingrat42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingrat42/gifts).



> The prompt I got for this exchange gave me a wonderful idea which I had no hope whatsoever of finishing by the deadline, because it will need to be about fifty thousand words long. So, this is the prologue, written to get some ideas together and try out a new style. I hope it stands on its own well enough to be interesting!

\--

The tiny worm-gear on the corner of Daniel's goggles, hingd to the shaded lens, gleamed as he shoved them up to his forehead. On the table the pile of wires reflected blueish under the electric lamp. "Is this about my gravitomodulator?"

"I suppose so," Veidt answered. He was still looking out the window, hands clasped behind his back. "I know you never patented it -"

"You know my opinions on patents."

"Yes, yes, they're an unconscionable interference with the free flow of technological progress. Spare me the sermon, Daniel, I do remember all the times you've given it out at the club." He paused, shoulders hunching. "No, that was rude. I do apologize. It's been a ... difficult week."

Daniel shoved the twisted wire aside before he answered. It would never take a useful form now. "They're also public record," he said. 

The moon was just rising, silhouetting the shape of the cranes and the airship mooring-mast of Hoboken Harbor. There was one at the top, now, a looming black shape like the pupil of a giant eye. 

"So you're still determined to keep your devices secret. I was afraid of that."

The rack of soldering wire folded back into the rack of crimping tools and irons, and Daniel set the whole thing down into the crate already half-full of conductive sheeting. BATTERY FLUIDS DO NOT DROP read the stenciled red lettering on its side. Daniel straightened up and pulled his goggles all the way off, to dangle from his hand. "Why? Were you hoping to buy the patents? Look - Adrian - it's not that I don't trust you. It's that I don't trust anyone in the Bureau of Technology and Innovation not to go sniffing around your private files. Or not to kick in your doors, if it came to it. And I certainly don't trust them with the plans for my gravitomodulator."

"I doubt it could be mass-produced. It takes an intuitive touch." Veidt turned around, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "You know my opinion of the Keene Act. I may have retired myself, but I won't speak against any inventor who prefers to keep working away from the eye if the Bureau. Some swords are better off rusting, even if they can't be beaten into plowshares."

"You always had a way with metaphors." Daniel sighed. 

"But not one sufficient to sufficient to convince you."

"No." The pencils rattled as Daniel turned them out onto his drafting table, to fetch out the small round tin labeled ISAACSON'S PATENT LINIMENT that rested beneath them. "Thank you for the job offer, but I think I would prefer working away from the eye of the Bureau, as you put it, even if that means working out of a cave somewhere. Or going back to ornithology."

Adrian bowed his head. "And you don't think that a automachine company could be sufficient disguise. Perhaps you're right. I've certainly had enough inspectors through, and it's no secret we used to be companions in adventure. Maybe Kovacs had the right idea, hiding his face."

"Kovacs was paranoid." Dan shook his head as he pulled the last month's worth of sketches out of the topmost drawer. "If that was even his real name. Maybe he's gone back to being Mister Smith, happily married baker in Queens. You know, we're lucky no one ever came after us in daylight. I suppose even men who'll threaten civilian hostages with experimental rayguns have standards." He tossed the pile of sketches into the steel sink beside the etching table, then, with only a second's hesitation, tossed a match in after them.

They caught at once. The flickering yellow fire fought the blue electric light to make twisting, unearthly shadows across his walls.

"I don't doubt Kovacs will still find time to deal with the local perversions of science." Adrian spread out his hand, a brief, graceful gesture. "It's the non-local ones that concern me."

"What? Don't tell me you believe that nonsense about Venusians."

"I wasn't intending anything quite so obviously originating in the pages of a penny-dreadful, no." His smile was broad, but it made the crow's-feet stand out. "Think about it, Daniel. We've gone looking for lost treasures in the depth of the ocean, but we've never found a trace of Atlanteans. We're men of science. We need evidence. But the people behind the Bureau are politicians, and for all we know they think Venusians abducted Doctor Osterman and are busy planning an invasion. It would certainly explain why they went to so much trouble to stir up popular opinion. Don't tell me you believe that nonsense about grassroots support for the Keene Act."

"Isn't that, well, a bit of a zebra? They don't need Venusians. A gravitomodulator would be plenty useful against Mexicans. Or Englishmen."

"It would be, if America were planning to go to war with the British Empire. No one's even tried to terrify people with that notion in a decade and a half since the little mess in San Juan blew over." Adrian looked down at the floor, his face twisting into the expression of a man finding a dead cockroach floating in his soup bowl. "And the Klansmen are a police problem, now the old Confederacy isn't under martial law. Not worth sending in troops while most of the government trying so hard to forget the war happened. Or going to all this trouble." 

"So you think it's some unknown enemy. Extraterrestrial."

"I wouldn't swear to the _extraterrestrial_ \- but absent some threat they're not choosing to reveal, some scientific threat they want scientists to counter, the Bureau has chosen a very strange time to invoke the specter of national security. I hope I'm wrong and the blame can be laid straight on President Grant's paranoia." 

The second batch of notebooks made a flame that almost shot up to the ceiling boards, illuminating the neat circles cut through the metal floor beams of the next story up. Daniel blinked at Adrian's narrow shape, outlined in the arch of the window against the rising moon. 

"I hope you're wrong too," he said. "I really hope you're wrong."

\--

He'd been thinking in terms of paranoia for eleven years now, since he had Kovacs had found the rats. The arch of the subway tunnel had loomed ahead of them. Daniel flicked on the auxiliary headlamps, but even their beams only illuminated damp stone, fading into utter blackness. He ran a hand along the edge of his goggles. Sweat was already beading beneath them. "Do you think he might have gas weapons?" 

"Better not to risk it," Kovacs growled. He was already pulling out his canister mask, and fastening it over the scarf that covered hi face beneath his own goggles. "No telling what Underboss did to those creatures." 

"The witnesses only said they looked like rats." 

A shape scurried across the yellow circle of headlamp light. It was impossible to make out any details, just an impression of matted damp fur, and then the shape of a long tail, about the size of a full-grown bull terrier. It was gone before Daniel's hand could reach for the beam adjustment. Kovacs's hand went tight on his shoulder, and he let out a sudden hiss. "Daniel - do you have - " 

"Sonic grenades in the left drawer," Daniel breathed. "Let's hope Veidt was right about them." 

"Not in the habit of being wrong." 

The engine purred as they gently slid forward into the tunnel, hovering a steady two feet above the rails. With the headlamps on the tunnel was brighter than Archie's cabin, and the two big round windows would only reflect the stonework. The tunnel curved to the right. Daniel kept his hands tight on the steering yoke and watched for side junctions. Metal locked door, bricked-up archway, another door. 

"Veidt knew plenty about the Underboss," Kovacs abruptly muttered. "Possible collusion?" 

Daniel didn't look away from the tunnel. "Veidt? Really? You've met the man." 

"Too clever by half." 

"That's just about clever enough these days," Daniel muttered. "I would never have gotten out of Greenland alive if it weren't for him."

"That only proves he has a use for you."

"Awfully pessimistic of you."

"Pessimists live longer," Kovacs growled. "If President Lincoln had been a pessimist he might have lived out his term."

A tunnel junction was looming ahead of them, tracks down both sides. Daniel flicked the headlamps back and forth, but both sides were featureless as far as their light extended. He hesitated, then spun the wheel to the left. "You think we should mark the way back?"

"Just in case they don't know we're here?"

"Not like we can hide. They could afford to excavate all this and lay rails for dragging wagons in and out. They can probably afford for someone to lurk around the door. Let's face it, we just have to rely on superior firepower."

"Hurm." It was impossible to read Kovacs' expression behind the scarf and goggles and mask. "Worked for the Union, but only needs one lucky bullet to kill us."

"Which is why we're staying in Archie. Hardened steel walls." He grinned under his gas mask.

"Will they stop Gatling guns?"

"First, we don't have any reason to think the Underboss has those. The Navy's kept a pretty close eye on production. Second, yes, Archie _can_ stand up to Gatling guns. Adventurers usually have better equipment than the military. We don't have to mass-produce anything. We don't have to worry about training a mass of recruits to use them - you think anyone could fly Archie? It'd all end in a horrible crash. And that's another reason a lot of inventors just won't share their best work." He was ticking off points on his fingers as if he were explaining things to a child, but if Kovacs was offended he made no protest. "Simplifying our designs for the public isn't the interesting part."

" _Interesting. Adventurers._ This isn't about _adventure_." Kovacs' fists were clenched, the leather gloves tight over his knuckles. 

The tracks ahead descended into a puddle; Daniel inched forward, trying to follow the glistening of the roof in case the tunnel was dropping below the water table. "So what is it about?"

"Keeping the world safe. Some things should not be. Even rats don't deserve what they say the Underboss does to them. Science is meant for _good_." 

"So, are you going to steal my plans and hand them over to the police to build replicas? Send a whole regiment of boys in blue after the next Underboss?"

There was a long silence before Kovacs answered, "No. Not their business."

"Isn't it?"

"They wouldn't understand."

Daniel slumped forward a little. "Alright. At least we agree on that much."

"Would have done that long ago if I were going to."

"Ha, ha, very-"

The thump from the back was hard enough that Archie rocked forward, and there was a horrible scraping noise, metal on stone, as its roof and the tunnel roof scraped together. Through the windows came a shower of sparks as the metal repulsion plates hit the third rail. Kovacs had a grenade in one hand already, and with the other he pulled out his blaster. "Boarders!" 

The door-latch wasn't rattling, yet, but Daniel yanked hard and spun their craft around. Its tail made that same horrible scraping noise on the wall, but then they were clear and their headlamps shone over two dozen of the rat-shaped things, each as big as a dog or bigger, the one in the middle the size of a pony and its massive incisors exposed. Behind them, a human figure in something like a diving suit, raising something rifle-shaped in both hands. The fuel-mixture button was right there and Daniel slammed it down, and a jet of flame shot out, raking the intruders with orange-yellow flames, the central figure lit up like a candle -

\--

Ten years later Laurel Schexnayder told him she was joining the Bureau.

Gas flame always looked distorted through glass. Daniel fixed his eyes on it anyway. "It's not what I would have expected of you, is all. You didn't seem to like them very much -"

"I expect I'll like them better with Slater in charge. Besides, I don't have much choice. I was never your kind of scientist."

Laurie tapped the ashes of her cigarette off into the neat brass-bound ashtray. In her neat yellow walking gown she stood out against the brown-and-gilt bookshelves; her expression was a narrow-eyed scowl. "I'm not stupid," she went on. "I don't have a reputation of my own to fall back on. It was all Osterman's. If I'm going to do something useful with my life it might as well be this." 

"To be frank, I'm not convinced the Bureau is useful." 

"When did you turn so damn cynical, Dreiberg?"

"Miss Schexnayder, I'm not implying -"

"That you think I'm a sellout?" Her next puff was an effortless smoke ring. "It's fine. I know I'm a sellout. But I'm a sellout who knows what a raygun core looks like and how to disrupt an photolithic resonance cascade, and they need at least one real scientist before they blow themselves up with a customs seizure. I don't know how this country is going to be ready for the Venusian invasion."

"We won't, because there's no such thing."

"Relax. It was a joke, alright? I know Osterman didn't get kidnapped by the Venusians. I mean, maybe _they'd_ give him _back_." She scrubbed suddenly at her eyes with the back of her hand, shoulders hunched like an angry cat. "Jesus. I must sound ridiculous."

Daniel settled hesitantly on the other end of the sofa, keeping a careful distance between them even while he patted her hand. 

The touch seemed to settle her, and she leaned back, letting her cigarette dangle. "At least we're doing something. I don't think I could stand it, sitting around waiting for whoever comes up with something worse than that weird psychoactive gas Zileski kept pumping into banks."

"The gas wasn't that bad," Daniel pointed out. "Nobody died from it. Some of them even had religious experiences."

"Really? You're kidding."

"Completely serious. I met one of them later. He'd been a teller at Third Federal, and he said he had a vision of Saint Francis of Assisi telling him to quit his job and become a traveling preacher."

"And he really went and did it? Was he any good at it?"

"Good enough to get invited to Doyle Hall. Or, well, interesting enough, I didn't listen to him preach. I ran into him having a drink next door. I was supposed to be meeting Veidt." He shrugged. "My point is, there are much more dangerous villains than Zileski out there already."

"Exactly. And maybe if we keep a better eye on things we won't be reliant on a dozen adventurers thwarting them as a hobby." 

"You were one of us," Daniel pointed out. "Sometimes."

"And now I'm not. Funny how that works."

"Are they making you a field agent?" 

"Of course they are. I have more practical experience dealing with _perversions of scientific progress_ than the lot of paper-pushers in Washington put together. Blake's helping me find some halfway competent people to work with." She shrugged, and stubbed the end of the cigarette out. "It's over for us. A dozen people with homemade machines just - aren't going to be enough, now everyone's started to work out how much you can do with a little imagination. I'm tired of getting telegrams from every half-baked idiot with a better Leyden jar who's convinced they'll be famous if they wave it around hard enough. At least this way I'll have more backup." Her hand went to the cigarette case still open on the side table, but left it alone and skirted over to her notepad instead. "Whereas you're probably going to retreat to your lab and build a better mousetrap, and everyone will buy it." 

"I'm not exactly Adrian Veidt." Daniel looked up at the books above her head. _Complete Principles of Electric Transference_. _The Secrets of the Lemurians._ _Radio Control For The Modern Age._ "You said it yourself. I'm a hobbyist. And maybe if the Bureau of Technology and Innovation starts going after these people I'll have some free time to go looking for Atlantis again." 

That got a laugh out of her. "You're not Veidt, you just have all the same obsessions." 

"We don't know what we could learn! Remember how long everyone thought dinosaurs had gone extinct?" 

"Those little chickens they found in the Amazon aren't exactly Tyrannosaurs." 

"No, but they were real. And we don't know if Atlantis was real, but if it was who knows what we could find out from them?" Daniel hesitated. "It's no more ridiculous than Venusians."

Laurie tapped her fingers on her notepad, swift and impatient. "Well, I wish you luck. If you need any of things we were working on when Osterman - I can pass them on." 

"That's surprisingly generous." 

"Like you said. Sometimes I was one of you." She gave half a shrug. "And sometimes I was Osterman's research assistant, and between those two I think I'm in a pretty good position to pass on some scientific progress." 

"Is this, ah, something I can mention to your new employers? Or an offer of under-the-table assistance?" 

There was a statue underneath the gaslight, an Egyptian figure of a woman in a pleated gown, hands folded. Her hair hung to a straight edge just over her eyebrows, the same style Laurie affected, and there was a black cosmetic trace around both their eyes. The similarity ended there; the statue wore white and an expression of obscure serenity, and Laurie was snorting in open amusement. "You think with Slater in charge they won't know? Just don't take out an advertisement in the Times, and we can all pretend nothing is going on they might have to care about." 

She'd picked up the little gold-colored propelling pencil and was spinning it between her fingers, an effortless, casual motion. It wasn't moving fast enough to blur, only to be distracting, glittering like a spinning gear. 

\--

The brass gear of his oversize wall clock had shone as it spun, and the hands had been hovering at eleven-thirty-nine, the last time Daniel Dreiberg had spoken to Jon Osterman. There had been a poster on the wall beneath it, clean four-color printing, showing a gear in bright blue. The Future Is Coming - Are You Ready?, it read, in a neat serif font like a Times headline. Osterman, as usual, was in shirtsleeves, with an air of distraction. "It seems to have an effect on gravitation," he told Daniel. "That's why I wanted to talk to you. Here, come take a look at the experiment." 

Daniel trailed him into the lab proper, brushing his hair behind his ears. It was a wide-open space, glass windows high on the walls like a factory floor. They passed by a massive arrangement of steel rods, arched and bolted to support a gleaming grey sphere. An alcohol engine spun a small wheel, belted to a huge wheel, whose shaft vanished into the intricate gears of an automachine calculator. A bank of massive acid batteries sat ominously silent, braided copper cable strung between them like the supports of a suspension bridge. One end was bolted to an - apparatus; there was no other word for it. Copper shapes, brass framework, lead plates around the outside, and in the middle a ceramic table on which an ordinary-looking lump of quartz rested.

Osterman hurried up to it and began to twist the cable loose. "We don't need full power just for a demonstration," he explained, eyes alight.

From somewhere behind them Laurie's voice said, "But it would be a better chance to see the effects." 

They glanced over their shoulders. She'd emerged from behind the bank of batteries, wielding a screwdriver. Daniel blinked. "Miss Schexnayder. I didn't know you were here." 

"Just checking some things." She was smiling like she was glad to see them. "If you're going to explain it to him you might as well go all the way, Jon. Should I pull the fuses on bank two?" 

"Of course." Osterman was nodding to himself, already distracted again. "According to all the traditional etheric resonance equations we should be losing energy as heat. That rock should be glowing white-hot by the time the jars discharge. But instead we're getting - well, you'll see. Are you familiar with Glass's theories on gravitational vectors?" 

"Intimately. I used his work on dampening effects to develop my metamaterials." 

"Well, I suspect what's going on here is that the etheric medium is transmitting a countervector. I might be able to use your metamaterials to confirm it, if you can spare them." He was looking at the hunk of quartz, face impassive and distant. The noon sunlight was too diffuse to outline anything in shadow; the lab almost glowed with it, from the pale wooden floor to the whitewashed ceiling. 

The hunk of quartz was irregular, with a dark streak of mineral inclusion on one size. About as big as a man's fist. Daniel clenched his hand. "I won't deny I've had my differences with the Rockefeller Laboratory ..." 

"Since you stormed out in a rage. We've all heard the story." Laurie's voice floated over the Leyden jars, and there was a metallic noise and then a click. "This gets pretty bright at full power. You'll want goggles," she went on, and the goggles came winging over the jars and landed in the hand Daniel had raised to catch them without a conscious thought. 

He began to put them on, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the yellowed light. Osterman ignored the motion. "The resonator we're using is an extruded wych bell," he said, and dropped to a crouch to pull open the panel beneath the ceramic surface. Its recurved shape was most of four feet across, silvery but obviously not silver. Polished steel, Daniel guessed. "Nothing unprecedented, except for the size. Thirty-four inch rim diameter." 

When Laurie stepped back out she was wearing goggles too, and her sleeves were pushed into a crumpled pile halfway up her arms. She took up a place silently beside them as Osterman closed the panel again and set his hand on the topmost of three knife switches. He hadn't put on goggles, even though, Daniel noticed now, there was a pair hanging on a hook on the side of the apparatus. "Ready?"

"Ready," Daniel said, and held his hands still. 

Osterman flipped the switch. For a fraction of a second nothing happened except a deep and alarming hum, and then the center of the apparatus began to glow. The quartz was emitting a light that looked oddly blunted through the yellow goggles but must have been the same bright blue as the poster outside, and a second later it was rising into the air, simply and suddenly, until it was just above their heads. There it slowed and went still. The glow had faded from arc-lamp to Robert-Houdin-bulb, and there was a high-pitched hum like the bell was about to overload. 

"Try this," Osterman said, and held out his hand until it was almost touching the impossible thing. "It's putting off heat, but only - " 

The deafening crack made them both stagger and Daniel stuck a hand out automatically to grab the apparatus. 

It didn't kill him at a touch. Instead there was another crack and the quartz went dark, vaulting itself to the floor, suddenly subject to gravity again. Laurie was crouching, arms over her head. "Jon, are you - " 

"Fine," Osterman answered, and he still sounded it. "That looks like Number Three that blew." 

"We'll have to increase the tension next time. Dreiberg? You didn't burn yourself, did you? There's - " 

"No." He waved his hands in the air to prove it. "Nothing at all." 

Laurie was already unfolding back upright, brushing off her skirt. "Watch out for the glass, then. Stupid thing," she went on. "Shoddy workmanship. And it's the second time we've blown a battery. It's like there's some kind of law. No serious research that changes our understanding of fundamental physics can be done without at least one explosion and without breaking at least one valuable piece of equipment. Well, at least you got to see it float." Her hair was coming loose from its severe knot, and she reached up to tuck it back in. "I'll get the broom."

Daniel nodded, clutching the table edge. There was broken glass scattered over the floor like a field of stars. Laurie didn't seem to pay it any attention as she clacked away, the heels of her trim blue boots echoing against the wood. 

They stood silent until the door swung shut behind her.

Eventually Osterman turned away, wiping at his brow with his sleeve. "I do apologize. That was a poor demonstration."

"I see what you mean about Glass's vector theory, though. It's a completely different mechanism than the metamaterial masking." Daniel tried to rub his eyes, found the goggles still on his face, and pushed them up, blinking as the world went white and sunwashed again. "Have you tried it on anything but the quartz?"

"Not yet. It takes more energy than it should to do that trick, and we want to figure out where the rest is going." Osterman spread out a hand. "Doctor Slater is convinced it's reflecting back to the ether and if we set up the right kind of instruments we'd find it."

"Not everything is aetheric."

"Well, I'd argue it if I had any better ideas." Osterman's smile was a strange thing, boyish for a man of forty-six. "Maybe it will be more obvious when we scale up."

"Scale up?"

"Oh yes. We're having a sixty-inch bell made. We have a new laboratory out in Hoboken. Thirty-foot ceilings. It might let us find the limits of the effect." The abstracted look was back on his face. 

Daniel stared out at the mess of the lab. Copper wires, winding the batteries together. 

"Fancy a drink while we talk it over? There's a place just down the street -"

"Called the Mount Olympus. I remember." He shook his head. "Thank you, but I think I need to sleep on it. And reread Glass's monographs. When will you have that other lab set up?"

"The new bell will be ready in nine days." 

"I'll come by then. And bring my gravitometric shielding."

"Thank you," Osterman said. He was fiddling with a loose thread on his shirtcuff. "I know you don't like to collaborate."

"Most people are - very eager to publish. I'm a little more concerned about some of the applications of modern physics becoming common knowledge." Daniel shrugged. "If there's one thing the government knows how to do, it's keep a secret. And if there are military applications to this they're a long way off."

"I hope so," Osterman answered. He didn't elaborate. The scattered bits of glass on the floor sparkled like daylight stars. 

Eight days later, he would vanish from the face of the earth. 

\--

Two months before that the Robert-Houdin bulb over Veidt's drafting table had made the blank expanse of it look sunwashed. "Yes," Veidt said, and smiled. "I filed the incorporation papers yesterday."

"It's just hard to picture you - I don't know. Writing up advertising fliers."

"There are firms for that. I'll be designing the machines." With a hint of a flourish, he spread the rolled-up paper he's been clutching over the table.

The machine it showed was a complicated mass of gears and valves, marked out in Adrian's neat, fluid cursive; Daniel could make out a gas line connection, and a hopper with meshing grinders below, and a small tank whose outlet valve appears to be on a spring. He stared at it for several seconds before its purpose resolved itself. "Who's going to buy a coffeemaker that complicated?"

"Right now? Hotels trying to show off their modernity. Rich people who don't like servants underfoot. But in a few years, production will be streamlined and economies of scale will kick in." Veidt had a salesman's smile. "The same principle applies to the automatic broom. And the two-step bread maker. And do you know how many improvements could be made to a sewing machine? Add the right set of gears, and they can sew a whole buttonhole with no more human input than turning a dial for the length."

"So you're making - modern conveniences. Automatic tools."

"To make people's lives easier. Yes." The edge of the oversize diagram was starting to curl up. Veidt snatched a paperweight from the windowsill, a black stone scarab, and slid it into place. "I know it's nothing like we've been making for adventuring."

"Much simpler, to begin with." 

Veidt waved a hand. "These things have to scale for mass production. It's its own kind of challenge, you know, designing everything from mass-producible parts. Sticking strictly to a form. It's like writing a sestina."

Daniel shook his head as he lowered himself onto the other chair, clutching at the snake-headed carvings on each armrest end. "I suppose I still don't understand, well, why. There are plenty of people who can make a better mousetrap. There aren't many who can do what you do." 

"You're one of them," Veidt pointed out, half-smiling. "I have complete confidence in you." 

"I'm only human. I can do some nice tricks with gravity and heat diffusion, but you can catch lightning in a bottle." 

"And now I'll catch it in Robert-Houdin lamps. I've been considering retiring for - years now, Daniel. This isn't a momentary impulse." 

"I wasn't accusing you of not thinking things through. You always think things through. Just - asking you to explain." 

It was a long moment before Veidt answered, looking down at the spread-out design. There was a basket full of rolled-up papers beside the desk, leaning at odd angles like the branches of a tree, and the lamp over the desk made their shadow look like the arching claws of some terrible creature. "Because I want to make the world a better place, and I'm increasingly convinced that whether a shipwright can install a rivet in the space of three breaths or a machinist leave a bull-gear to cut itself while he takes tea makes a greater difference, in aggregate, than whether a man with more greed than ambition can melt though the door of a bank vault in a quarter-hour. Which is not to say I think all adventurers should set down their rayguns. There would be a veritable plague of less scrupulous inventors causing trouble, and some things are beyond the remit of ordinary policemen." 

"So you're making coffee machines and sewing machines and cleaning machines. And giving the designs to hired men to copy." 

"Exactly. The best possible tools for ordinary lives." Veidt had picked up the scarab paperweight, hands folded around it like he was trying to keep it warm. "It's not as if I weren't licensing patents before this. It was the best way to keep my fortune from dwindling without stooping to market speculation. You knew about the spark-mill." 

"If it's fortune you wanted we could go looking for sunken treasure." Daniel spread a hand. 

It got a laugh, at least. "I'll pass. But if you want company on your next expedition to the Arctic I would be honored. Adventuring to advance the cause of science, I have no intention of giving up." 

"Thank you. Adrian." Daniel laid his hand on Veidt's, beside where he had laid the scarab, on the heating coil of the too-complicated coffeemaker sketch. "I wish that was the only kind of adventuring we had to do," he admitted. "Kovacs keeps talking about the triumph of the light, and I'm afraid Miss Schexnayder is going to snap and take someone's head off - I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that about a lady - " 

"Talk like that in front of her and the head will be yours," Adrian dryly informed him. 

"Right. Well. My point is, if people were more sensible we could all devote ourselves to exploring the forgotten corners of the world. You know there's supposed to be a surviving teratorn flock somewhere in Mexico? Assuming no one's shot them down for sport. It would be worth going there just to look for a few feathers, but I'd really like to get a look at their flying technique, those things are so big they shouldn't be able to take off." 

"An admirable sentiment," Veidt answered. "But I'm afraid people will never be more sensible. We'll have to settle for leading by example." 

He had pulled out another of the rolls of paper, then, disarranging the clawed shadow into the innocuous shape of a leafless winter tree. He laid it out atop the other sketch and pulled his blue-enameled inkwell onto the corner for a weight. This one was harder to decipher, notes trailing into furious scribbles. "Mechanical stenographer," Veidt said, as Daniel stared. "Not nearly ready yet. But I'm working on it." 

\--

Now, almost two years later, Daniel Dreiberg and Adrian Veidt walked away from the remains of Daniel's old lab. A streetlight gleamed through the complicated mass of branches above them, and the handful of dead leaves still clinging to their tree were still in the breezeless cold. Daniel tugged his scarf a little closer. 

Veidt's hands were shoved in the pockets of his unbuttoned greatcoat, and his breath made clouds in the air as he looked up at the light. "How long will that last, do you think?"

"Pardon?"

"Gaslamps."

"I don't know. They started putting up arc lamps in Buffalo, but nobody's worked out how to move electricity very far from a spark mill. Looking for a new challenge?"

"There's never any shortage. Just wondering what the world will look like in twenty years."

They turned the corner. Somewhere far off a phaeton was rattling over the cobblestones, and a woman in a frayed, oversize coat was hurrying down the street, shoes flapping loose with every step. In the building beside them the last straggling lights were clicking off. A forlorn newspaper lay crumpled under the next tree. -LESCOPE IN WEST VIR- read the slice of headline Daniel could make out between the fold and the damp.

"More railroads and not much new," Daniel guessed. "After the Keene Act everyone's going to be too nervous about the Bureau to work on their best ideas. Or move to England, I suppose."

"Yes, it's going to be interesting to enforce. Unless England decides to follow suit, I suppose." Veidt sighed. "Miss Schexnayder will be busy." 

"If something's out in the open in patent records in another country it would be hard to argue that it should be an official secret here. They'll have to settle for banning imports, I suppose." 

"If you feel like developing an invisibility device you could sell it to smugglers and make bank." 

Daniel tilted his head as he considered it. "Theoretically possible, but I don't know if I could get the aluminum reagents to do the testing." 

"It was a joke, Daniel." Veidt half-smiled. "I do make them from time to time." 

"Among other things." They were closing in on a still-open bar, spilling its smoky yellow light onto the cobblestones. A man stood in the doorway waving a smoking-pipe, talking to someone still inside. "Adrian? Have the Bureau - asked you to turn over anything yet? You said they'd been poking around your labs." 

Adrian stopped. His face was half-lit by the yellow glow and it brought out the lines of his face, cheekbones standing out as if he'd lost weight. "They have not," he said, "and I don't intend that they will. Everything I build now is meant to be mass-produced. Obviously so, to any agent with a modicum of mechanical skill." 

"Ah." 

"They came by yesterday. They're like bull-terriers. I wrote to Miss Schexnayder to suggest she pull their leashes a bit." 

Daniel hunched his shoulders against the chill. It was impossible to read Adrian's expression now he had turned his back to the window. "Does she have that much weight in the Bureau?" 

"Oh, yes. I understand some of the men there had questions about her suitability, but she convinced them very quickly there was no substitute for adventuring experience. It's for the best, I suppose. If the Venusians invade humanity couldn't ask for a better general to lead the countercharge. But until then, we'll have to put up with the harassment of a gaggle of men with more suspicion than sense." 

"You will," Daniel pointed out. "I'm retired." 

The wind was picking up; dead leaves were skittering down the street and dancing around their feet. Veidt's coat was too heavy to move in the breeze. When he began walking again it was with a careful hesitancy, like a man trying to avoid tacks scattered on the floor. "You're retired. I'm retired from adventuring and selling domestic appliances. Miss Schexnayder is working for the government. Blake has always been the government. Gardner walked in front of a train. And Kovacs vanished from the face of the earth. I do hope the Bureau is up to the job of protecting us from scientific madmen, because there's no one else left. Certainly no one will step up to the job without inventors backing them." 

"I'm more afraid that they'll try." 

"And die horribly without the right kind of armor, you mean?" 

"Eventually." Neither of their feet were making much noise as they trod side by side. "If they win a fight or two by luck first, they might inspire more." 

"One can't erase the human impulse to improve the world. I hope the Bureau is advertising for brave men. And I do hope they have good copy writers." 

The bar retreated behind them. The street ahead stretched out, dark brick buildings mottled under the gaslamp light. A bare-branched linden loomed at the next intersection, waving gently. 

"Adrian? Do you ever wonder if we did the right thing trying to clean up the world ourselves? Or should we have stuck to looking for Atlantis?" 

Veidt waved a hand. "You, of all people, have to ask? You always used to say that men of science had to take care of our own, that some things were too dangerous for anyone to destroy who couldn't have built. It's not a matter of who should; it's a matter of who can." 

"I suppose so. I did say that." 

"And I agreed, Daniel." 

Daniel shivered. The linden was quaking; his coat had started to whip around his knees. Ahead of them the street was deserted, people indoors or gone back to their own houses, cabs driven back into their garages. Only a delivery wagon rolled slowly up the street, horse with its head dropped low against the weight of a half-dozen barrels. "I don't think you're going to find a cab this late," he said. "Can I offer you my guest room?" 

"Thank you." 

"No trouble. It's the least I can do when you came all this way." 

The moon was high by now, no longer silhouetting the distant skyline. Two hundred thirty-nine thousand miles hadn't diminished its beams, but against the gaslamps they washed out, pale and barely adding anything to the light. 

\--

>   
>  [ He took his vorpal sword in hand;  
> Long time the manxome foe he sought—  
> So rested he by the Tumtum tree  
> And stood awhile in thought.  
> \- Lewis Carroll ]


End file.
